After which she went to embrace her daughter and lie down. As for the tenant, she cried no more, did not even leave her room, and was not slow in taking her departure.
Two days after she had gone a captain of police, accompanied by two of his officers, came and roundly abused Maria Alexevna, who, it must be allowed, took no pains on her part, as the phrase goes, to keep her tongue in her pocket. Over and over again she repeated:
"I do not know what you mean. If you wish to find out, you will see by the books of the establishment that the woman who was here is named Savastianoff, one of my acquaintances, engaged in business at Pskow. And that is all."
After having redoubled his abuse, the captain of police finally went away.
That is what Vérotchka saw at the age of eight.
At the age of nine she received an explanation of the affair from Matroena. For the rest, there had been but one case of the kind in the house. Sometimes other adventures of a different sort, but not very numerous.
One day, as Vérotchka, then a girl of ten years, was accompanying her mother as usual to the old clothes shop, at the corner of the Rue Gorokhovaïa and the Rue Sadovaïa she was struck a blow on the neck, dealt her doubtless to make her heed this observation of her mother:
"Instead of sauntering, why do you not cross yourself as you go by the church? Do you not see that all respectable people do so?"
At twelve Vérotchka was sent to boarding-school, and received in addition lessons in piano-playing from a teacher who, though a great drunkard, was a worthy man and an excellent pianist, but, on account of his drunkenness, had to content himself with a very moderate reward for his services.
At fourteen Vérotchka did the sewing for the whole family, which, to be sure, was not a large one.
When she was fifteen, such remarks as this were daily addressed to her:
"Go wash your face cleaner! It is as black as a gypsy's. But you will wash it in vain; you have the face of a scarecrow; you are like nobody else."
The little girl, much mortified at her dark complexion, gradually came to consider herself very homely.
Nevertheless, her mother, who formerly covered her with nothing but rags, began to dress her up. When Vérotchka in fine array followed her mother to church, she said sadly to herself:
"Why this finery? For a gypsy's complexion like mine a dress of serge is as good as a dress of silk. This luxury would become others better. It must be very nice to be pretty! How I should like to be pretty!"
When she was sixteen, Vérotchka stopped taking music lessons, and became a piano-teacher herself in a boarding-school. In a short time Maria Alexevna found her other lessons.
